Advances in facial recognition software have propagated to relatively low cost desktop image editing software such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple Photos. Such facial recognition software has even propagated to relatively low cost consumer and prosumer cameras. In most instances, the facial recognition software is intended to assist the software or device user in organizing or arranging images in an intuitive manner that facilitates locating groups of related images using plain syntax rather than complex search terms (e.g., find images of Uncle George or Aunt Martha). Some facial recognition algorithms identify facial features by extracting landmarks, or features, from an image of the subject's face. For example, an algorithm may analyze the relative position, size, and/or shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. These features are then used to search for other images with matching features. Other algorithms normalize a gallery of face images and then compress the face data, only saving the data in the image that is useful for face recognition. A probe image is then compared with the face data. One of the earliest successful systems is based on template matching techniques applied to a set of salient facial features, providing a sort of compressed face representation. Recognition algorithms can be divided into two main approaches, geometric, which looks at distinguishing features, or photometric, which is a statistical approach that distills an image into values and compares the values with templates to eliminate variances.
When such systems analyze the facial characteristics of infants or small children, the process is often quite error prone and may result in misidentification of siblings or misidentification of different infants due to the similarity inherent in the facial features of many infants and small children.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.